London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

A teenage majorette who performed at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration has been shot dead.

Hadiya Pendleton, 15, was killed in a Chicago park a mile from the President’s home in yet another attack fuelling the gun law debate. Two other teenagers were wounded.

Police announced a reward of $11,000 for information about the killer and the dead girl’s father Nathaniel pleaded for anyone who knows the man’s identity to come forward.

“My daughter was destined for great things,” he said. “This gunman, whoever you are, you took the light of my life. Just look at yourself and know that you took a bright, innocent, non-violent person.”

Hadiya, a pupil at elite King College Prep, was a majorette with the school band and hoped to become a pharmacist or a journalist after university. She was in the park with friends after their exams when a gunman jumped over a fence and opened fire on the group.

Doctors pronounced her dead in hospital less than an hour after the shooting. Two teenage boys suffered non- life-threatening wounds. Police said neither Hadiya nor anyone in her group was involved with gangs and believe it may have been mistaken identity.

A spokesman for Mr Obama said: “It’s a terrible tragedy any time a young person is struck down with so much of their life ahead of them — and we see it far too often.”

Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in Chicago, where killings in 2012 climbed above 500. The city has strict arms control laws and the President pondered whether its example gave weight to the pro-gun campaigners’ argument that more legislation may not necessarily reduce shootings.

He said at the White House: “The problem is that a huge proportion of these guns come into the city from outside Chicago.”

The latest killing came as former US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, 42, — who was shot in the head two years ago — told a Senate hearing in Washington she wants fast action by lawmakers to curb firearms.

But the chief executive of America’s most powerful gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association, rejected Democratic proposals to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Wayne LaPierre told the hearing that requiring background checks for all gun purchases would be ineffective as the Obama administration is not doing enough to enforce the law as it is.